This paper deals with a seeming contradiction that may seriously impair Aristotle’s definition of the soul in his De Anima. While this definiens has been widely regarded as providing a non-dualistic account of life-functions, grounded in a hylomorphic approach to living beings, Aristotle sticks to an instrumental language vis-à-vis the body, which he consistently refers to as a tool of the soul. It is argued that this philosophical way of talking should be taken at face value, without dismiss- ing it (...) as a stylistic feature or a theoretical hangover from Aristotle’s Platonic days. By paying close attention to the Peripatetic and Neoplatonic reception of the “soul – boatman analogy”, the paper concludes that organic bodies may be considered as instrumental in nature, without this entailing commitment to further individual souls conceived as “users”. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that (...) which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner realm which some take to be of a di erent kind than the physical—as most take him to be. His explanandum is content acquisition; the explanans is showing how the body becomes like various aspects of objects. Although he famously describes the mind (nous) as unmixed with the body, he is guided by functional constrains—nous cannot be limited or qualified if it is to potentially think all things. Thus, his inquiry into cognition is philosophically limited from a contemporary perspective. Aristotle is not doing philosophy of mind, for he doesn’t seem to find the “mental” philosophically perplexing. (shrink)

Este ensayo sostiene que uno de los desafíos más apremiantes que debe enfrentar una psicología de inspiración peripatética es el de conservar la relevancia causal del alma en los tres órdenes del cambio físico (traslación, alteración y crecimiento), sin hacer de ella un “motor” interno que desplace al organismo por hallarse en continuidad con él. En caso de no sortear con éxito este escollo, tal psicología no podrá afirmar que el alma sea un ítem inextenso e impasible, sino (a lo (...) sumo) un cuerpo sutil que desplaza a otro más grosero. Mittelmann propone una lectura conjunta de los tratados de Alejandro y Aristóteles acerca del alma, con el fin de presentar la estrategia de Alejandro como un modo exitoso de hacer frente a esa dificultad patente. Según Mittelmann, Alejandro hallaría en los “estados disposicionales” de Aristóteles el paradigma apropiado para concebir la eficacia causal de las formas. Aquellos podrían oficiar de motores inmóviles en la medida en que reúnen una doble condición, que ni las formas platónicas ni los cuerpos sutiles pueden satisfacer: por una parte, su carácter incorpóreo no los convierte en substancias (separadas); por otra, su carácter inseparable no los convierte en cuerpos que desplacen a otros cuerpos por hallarse en contacto con ellos. (shrink)